TAKING ON GODZILLA

AMC Entertainment Inc., eager to export its concept of multiplex movie theaters worldwide, has announced plans to build a 13-screen complex in Fukuoka in southwestern Japan.

When it opens in 1996, the 2,600-seat complex will be the largest in Japan and AMC's first project to open abroad since the company exited Great Britain in 1989.

AMC has announced plans to build as many as 3,000 screens worldwide by the end of the decade, almost double the 1,600 screens it controls in the United States.

"Our first theater in Japan demonstrates our belief in the Japanese market and represents an important milestone in the implementation of our international growth initiative," said Stanley H. Durwood, AMC's chairman and chief executive officer.

AMC's first project in Japan will be in the heart of a $1 billion real estate development in the center of Fukuoka. The city is a regional agricultural center, much like Kansas City, and located on the southern island of Kyushu.

In a news conference in the city, AMC announced the signing of an agreement with Fukuoka Design & Development Co. Ltd., which is developing the 2.5 million square-foot Canal City Hakata Project.

It will include a hotel, office and retail complex. AMC will invest about $4 million to furnish and equip the theatre.

Kazuhiko Enomoto, president of Fukuoka Jisho Co. Ltd., which will own the complex, said, "We are delighted that AMC, one of the largest, most innovative and respected motion picture exhibitors in the world, has given Fukuoka Jisho Co. such a significant vote of confidence."

Fukuoka Jisho is the development arm of the Fukuoka City Bank, which has $26.6 billion in assets.

AMC will be up against a growing Japanese aversion to seeing movies in theaters, which has caused the number of theaters in the country to dwindle.

But the Kansas City company's arrival in Japan, long considered an impenetrable fortress, is considered a sign that barriers to global commerce are coming down.

"Any time we can do any kind of business in Japan, it is a significant development," said G. Cameron Hurst, director of the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Kansas.

An official at the U.S. Department of Commerce said that the Japanese film exhibition has a reputation for being difficult to enter.

Even though large conglomerates control both film production studios and theatre exhibitions in Japan, AMC believes it will have no problem obtaining U.S. and Japanese films to show its Japanese audiences.

"We'll get the support that we need,"said Peter C. Brown, AMC chief financial officer. "We are confident we would get the product or we wouldn't have gone this far."

As for obstacles to doing business in Japan, AMC executives say it was easier to conclude a deal in Japan than in France, where AMC maintains its European headquarters.

While AMC will be the second American film exhibitor to enter Japan, after Time Warner Inc., it plans to take a different approach to the market. Time Warner Inc. in 1991 entered a joint venture with Nichii Co., an Osaka-based retailer, to build multiplexes in shopping centers. Time Warner officials could not be reached.

Time Warner has gone after mostly rural markets, Brown said, while AMC, in a switch from its suburban thrust in the United States, is headed for downtown Japan.

Downtown cores in Japan are beehives well into the evening, with office workers working late and shoppers reluctant to return to relatively small homes.

As television sets have grown larger and VCRs have multiplied into many homes, the Japanese consumer has stayed away from theaters in droves.

The number of screens in Japan, which peaked at 7,000 screens in the mid-1980s, fell to 1,773 by 1993. That represents 1.4 screens for every 100,000 people. The typical Japanese consumer goes to the theater once a year.

In the United States, there are 24,900 screens or 9.9 for every 100,000 people according to Paul Kagan Associates Inc. Typically, Americans see a movie more than four times a year.

"Attendance has been declining in Japan the last several years," Brown said. "Our feeling is it has to do with the nature of facilities."

Most theaters have just a single screen and many close weekdays at 7 p.m., before most Japanese have had dinner.

"The American style multiplex theater is unheard of in Japan," Brown said.

AMC managed to reverse a similar decline in theater attendance in Great Britain in the 1980s by developing 10 handsome 12-screen multiplexes. Many in Europe's film industry say AMC's investment is the main reason movie attendance doubled in the United Kingdom between 1985 and 1991.

As a result of financial pressures, AMC sold its United Kingdom properties in 1988 for $98 million.

Some Japan-watchers suggest that film attendance in Japan has fallen because many Japanese filmmakers crank out gangster and pornographic films.

Takashi Matsumoto, Japanese consul-general in Kansas City, said that AMC's decision to help upgrade Japan's movie theatres should spur improvements in Japan's film industry.

"It will be a very good stimulus to the Japanese movie artists and the Japanese audiences, of course," he said. "I am sure our people will enjoy it."